Melmi

Being able to sell FOSS is one of the freedoms “free software” refers to.

Honestly though I think the thing that struck me the most and I found kind of scummy was their “value statement” where they were advertising the OS by comparing it to the prices of the proprietary software is includes alternatives to. You misreading the website wasn’t an accident, they designed it in a deceptive way IMO.

If they were more honest about it, I wouldn’t have any problem with them charging for the convenience of having everything pre-bundled. Of course you could set everything up yourself, but Linux is notoriously finnicky. People want a complete experience, they want support. They want the slick branding.

As far as I know Zorin is FOSS, for what it’s worth. It’s mostly just bundled FOSS software with some slick themes and accessibility features, plus a few in-house system apps which they do seem to provide sources for.

They mention that it’s open source on their website but they don’t mention FOSS probably because the libre/gratis distinction is confusing for people.

Editing the systemd services seems a neat solution here. Rather than editing the package-provided service files directly, you can create overrides using systemctl edit.

Another more hacky option would be to use the PostUp directive but account for the case there’s no tailscale0 device yet. Write a simple shell script or something.

Classic